Kathleen Reading

Kathleen Reading…

In this small study, I have painted my grandmother in oils on paper. She sits in an old black leather armchair, a book open in her hands. Beside her is the range cooker in a plain kitchen—bare walls, half-panelled, quiet and unadorned. The moment feels still, reflective, almost suspended. A quiet, pensive pause.

My grandmother, Kathleen—Kate to those who knew her well—was a warm and gentle woman from the countryside of County Wexford. Kind, quick to laugh, and deeply good-hearted. Yet her life had not been easy. She had been a farmer and a tireless worker, but over the course of the 1940s the farm slowly failed. Perhaps the weight of wider economic troubles, the difficulties of the time, and the demands of raising four children all played their part. My grandfather, a town man by upbringing, had married into the land. Farming was not in his bones, and he never acquired the knowledge needed to sustain it.

In later years she came to live with us in Brentford. By then she had grown quite deaf. Often she would sit quietly in her chair, reading or murmuring her prayers in a soft whisper that barely carried across the room.

We loved her dearly, and we miss her still.

This painting is my way of remembering her: the quiet dignity, the endurance, the gentle presence she brought into our home. It is only a small sketch for now, a beginning—yet I hope it will grow into a larger painting that I plan to begin this spring.

Oils on gessoed paper, A4.